Health Minister considers limiting number of passengers allowed into country

Senior officials across a number of Government departments met yesterday in a bid to solve the impasse around adding more countries to the mandatory quarantine list. File photo:Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly is considering placing a cap on the number of people allowed enter the country if the hotel quarantining system comes under pressure.

He has said he wants to press ahead with an expansion of hotel quarantining despite a split within Government on the matter.

Senior officials across a number of Government departments met yesterday in a bid to solve the impasse around adding more countries to the mandatory quarantine list. 

However, it is understood there is still significant disagreement within Government and questions remain around hotel capacity.

A row between Mr Donnelly and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney broke out last week after public health officials recommended 43 countries, including a number of EU states and the US, be added to the list.

Mr Donnelly said the advice he has received around variants from a number of EU countries including Austria, France, Germany, and Italy is of "particular concern" and he wants to add more states to the list.

He refused to rule out a move that would put a limit on the number of passengers allowed entry into the country and said nothing is off the table.

"What I would be in favour of is picking the right countries and having mandatory hotel quarantining in place. Australia and New Zealand do have a cap in place, so that's certainly something that can be looked at," said Mr Donnelly.

Meanwhile, a review of the risk of blot clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine will be published by the European Medicines Agency later this week.

The EMA’s head of vaccines, Marco Cavaleri, on Tuesday told an Italian newspaper that they had found more cases of cerebral thrombosis in vaccinated young people than is usual.

However, within hours the EMA issued a statement denying this and said they had "not yet reached a conclusion".

Ireland had paused use of this vaccine temporarily but has since resumed following reports that the vaccine could be linked to rare blood clots in the brain.

The vaccine is also now under review in the UK after the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) reported 22 cases of the rare clotting and eight other thrombosis events. The UK has given 18.1m doses of AstraZeneca.

The University of Oxford has paused giving this vaccine to children as part of a small trial. The university said no safety issues were found, but they would await further information from the UK health bodies.

British prime minister Boris Johnson doubled down on support for AstraZeneca yesterday, stating the "advice to people is to keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab".

A further 443 Covid cases were confirmed here last night and there are now 261 Covid patients in hospital, of which 60 are in ICU.

Nine additional deaths related to Covid-19 were also reported, with just one of these occurring in April.

The worldwide death toll has now exceeded 3m. The tally shows it took over a year for the count to reach 2m but over 1m deaths took place in about three months.